Ahmanson nabs Broadway faves

Two world premiere American musicals, a provocative 2007 Tony Award winner, a disgraced president, a classic revue and a comic grande dame from Down Under will add up to the Ahmanson Theatre’s 42nd season in 2008-09, announced today by Center Theatre Group.

CTG also revealed a highlight of the Ahmanson’s 2009-10 season: the Disney-Cameron Mackintosh Broadway musical extravaganza, “Mary Poppins.”

The 2008-09 season opener will be “9 to 5: The Musical” (Sept. 20-Oct. 19), based on the 1980 film that starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton as corporate secretaries out for revenge against their chauvinist boss.

It will feature music and lyrics by Parton and a book by Patricia Resnick, the film’s co-author. Directed by Tony Award-winner Joe Mantello (“Wicked”), the show is set to star “The West Wing’s” Allison Janney in Tomlin’s role, Stephanie J. Block in Fonda’s and Megan Hilty in Parton’s. Stage veteran Marc Kudisch will portray their unscrupulous superior.

The long-delayed world premiere of “Minsky’s,” a musical about a Roaring ‘20s burlesque impresario based on the 1968 film “The Night They Raided Minsky’s,” is scheduled to be presented Feb. 6 to March 1 by special arrangement with producer Bob Boyett. Book writer Bob Martin and director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who teamed up for the U.S. premiere of “The Drowsy Chaperone” in the Ahmanson’s 2005-06 season, will join composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Susan Birkenhead.

“Minsky’s” was originally set to premiere under the film’s full title at the Ahmanson in 1999, with Strouse and Birkenhead’s score and direction and choreography by the husband-and-wife duo Mike Ockrent and Susan Stroman, who had collaborated on “Crazy for You.” But the show was shelved that year upon the death of Ockrent. He had conceived it with author Evan Hunter, who died in 2005.

The national tour of “Spring Awakening,” last year’s best musical Tony winner, will run Oct. 30 to Dec. 7, helmed by its Broadway director, Michael Mayer. The sexual coming-of-age story, based on the 1891 play by Frank Wedekind, features choreography by Bill T. Jones, a rock score by Duncan Sheik, and book and lyrics by Steven Sater.

The tour has yet to be cast, but word is that Kate Burton -- a stage and screen veteran (and wife of CTG artistic director Michael Ritchie) who took over for Christine Estabrook in the Broadway production -- won’t rejoin the show here.

“Frost/Nixon,” Peter Morgan’s play depicting the battle of wits between TV interviewer David Frost and former President Nixon, will be a season “bonus option” (March 12-29, 2009), with Stacy Keach as Nixon.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” (April 24-May 31, 2009), the Fats Waller musical revue based on an idea by Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr., will be a CTG production conceived and directed by Maltby. The exclusive run will mark the show’s 30th anniversary.

Australia’s self-proclaimed “gigastar” will wrap up the season in “Dame Edna: My First Last Tour” (June 10-21, 2009). Also a “bonus option,” it will star Barry Humphries, who was forced to cancel a North American tour this year after complications from appendix surgery.

Finally, the North American tour of the lavish London and New York presentation of “Mary Poppins,” based on P.L. Travers’ stories and the 1964 Walt Disney film, will begin in March 2009 in Chicago, and its limited run at the Ahmanson will begin that November.

With Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman’s classic songs, book by Julian Fellowes and additional songs, music and lyrics by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, the tour is to include the entire original creative team, led by director Richard Eyre and co-director and choreographer Matthew Bourne.

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lynne.heffley@latimes.com